The present invention relates generally to an animal or watering dish and, more particularly, to a dish including mounting means for facilitating mounting the dish to the side of a cage defined by a lattice structure.
It is well known to provide feed dishes for cages containing small birds or animals wherein the dish is adapted to be mounted to the side of the cage. Known feed dishes utilize a number of different designs and mechanisms for attaching the dishes to the side of a cage. For example, a known mounting structure is provided for engaging between two adjacent vertical elements of a cage lattice structure, and another known mounting structure includes members for hanging the dish from a horizontally extending element of the cage structure. Typically, there is a trade-off between securely mounting the dish or feeder to the side of the cage and providing for ease of removal of the dish, such as may be necessary for refilling or cleaning the dish.
In a recently proposed structure, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,872, a mounting structure integrally formed with the feeding dish is described, including a threaded male member which is adapted to extend through the side of a cage and be engaged by a cooperating threaded female member to thereby retain the dish in position on the cage. The design of such a mounting structure requires facility in rotating threaded members, which in certain circumstances may hinder use of the feeder due to the particular location of the cage and/or abilities of the person attending to the feeder.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a feed dish which may be securely mounted to the lattice structure of an animal cage, and which is further characterized by a mechanism which is easily and quickly manipulated to mount and dismount the feed dish relative to the cage side.